Drowning in Warm Water
by Bone Dry
Summary: Deb wakes up hungover in a cheap motel room with nothing to occupy her but her demons. Set a few weeks before the start of s8.


The first thing I notice is the birds chirping outside. Every little peep grates, like crumpled up tin foil inside my eardrums, and my head is about to split open like an egg, and it's really, really, _really, __**really**_ goddamn fucking hot in here, and I haven't even been awake ten seconds and already I can feel that _thing_ again crawling up my chest, that pain, that goddamn guilt and I can see her there burned into the back of my eyelids on her knees in that container, begging me to do it, and I can feel the gun, _my _gun, _my fucking police pistol_ leap in my hands, that half a second I took to line her up in the sights, and then the shot exploding off the metal, and the smell...

I force my eyes open. Morning (or afternoon? does it matter?) light streams in through the thin, ugly as shit brown curtains. With the birds I can now hear cars, and voices through the walls, and bass, pulsating. My head throbs hard, like someone hit the inside of my skull with a shovel, and a volcano of pain and something else erupts abruptly up my stomach. I force myself to lean off the bed as the half a burrito I ate last night comes up hot and fast and disgusting.

I choke on acid and half digested steak and rice, and every time I smell it I keep heaving until there's nothing left but the aftertaste. When it finally ends I just stare down at the puke, and for this weird suspended moment I can't remember what I'm looking at or where I am or why, the whole of this seems so utterly impossible, so utterly... I don't know, just _fucked_, like it's all some fucked up dream and I somehow invented all of this shit, this steaming pile of elephant shit that is my life in my head, but of course I know that this is not some assfuck of a dreamscape, that I really am lying on a thin as fuck mattress in the shittiest, cheapest fucking motel I could find because they wouldn't ask who I was, and I didn't have to say my name aloud.

(_Debra Morgan, ex-Lieutenant of Miami Metro Homicide, sister and accomplice to a serial killer, widowed fiancé to another, and a Murderer herself)_

I roll over and stare up at the popcorn ceiling.

(_Murderer I'm a fucking murderer I fucking __**killed**__ her jesus christ in a fucking cabana)_

I close my eyes.

I need... anything, just something, just fucking anything...

But there's nothing to chase the hangover but scattered to-go cartons and empty beer bottles and a couple packets of hot sauce on the table, and I can smell the trash from here, and the inside of my mouth tastes like a dog's asshole. I want to weep but there's no tears left, and I don't deserve them anyway. I'm a murderer and I'm free to live, to stay in this shithole, to lay here on this bed, because I got away with it. No one knows what I've done except him.

(_I went to __**stop**__him__ that's why I tracked her down but __**I**__ killed her instead of..._)

I scramble for the orange bottle on the nightstand, grab one of the little white pills, force myself to sit up and swallow it, wanting to kill the thoughts. Fuck.

I can't do this.

_Fuck cock mother shit._

I...

I look down.

There are papers scattered all over the bed. Pictures and papers from Elway's folder. I don't even know why I took this case. Maybe because I need a paycheck. Maybe because it took me out of Miami, away from... everything. From him. Dexter. He finally stopped coming by to check on me, but he keeps fucking calling, and I knew any second he was going to show up at my house again with that goddamn empty look on his face, that soulless fucking look I don't know how I never fucking noticed, and he would've asked me how I was doing, as if he expected me be okay with... everything, as if I could just suddenly turn off my conscience and become every bit as cold and ruthless and robotic as him and his goddamn lizard brain are. He doesn't understand why I left the force, why I took this chickenshit job, why all I want is to drown in an enormous, unending, overwhelming amount of booze. And of course he wouldn't know, couldn't know, because he's a goddamn psychopath and he's killed... jesus, I don't even want to think about how many people were brought up from the water, were logged on his little slides. Of course he doesn't give a shit about LaGuerta— he was planning to kill her himself, and as far as he's concerned we're safe and the latest person digging into his life (_our_ _lives_) is gone, and I should be relieved. ("_You did what you had to"_) He doesn't... the whole concept of guilt is beyond him. Meanwhile I can barely stand to even fucking look at myself, at what he turned me into, at what I chose to become.

My phone vibrates, lights up under the cheap, off-white sheets. For a moment I just glare in its general direction, not really able to focus on it. The pounding in my head is relentless, like the asshole shovel guy in there is gleefully cracking his blade into my skull to the beat of the bass line on the other side of the wall. But despite it I reach for the phone, hold it up.

Speaking of that wet wad of fuck...

_Dexter_

My molars slam together. The pounding seems harder now, upgrading from shovel to... well, an even fucking larger shovel, like the ones they use for clearing snow in New York.

I drop the phone, stare off to some random point in space, waiting for the buzzing to stop. The thought of letting him back into my life makes me sick. Since I found out his grand fucking secret everything's just gone downhill, not slowly, but steadily and in big pieces, leaving me to ride the landslide down to a bottom I sure as fuck don't want to hit.

(_Because we both know there are only a finite amount of endings to this, to him, and none of them involve white picket fences_)

(_And I can't watch him die_)

The phone stops, suddenly, mercifully.

I exhale, realizing I'd been holding my breath. He can't find me here, short of pulling GPS on my phone. I paid in cash for this room. All he can do is call, and all I have to do is avoid. It could work forever, until he gives up. I could rot in this hell, and he can do just whatever the fuck he wants.

The phone starts buzzing again.

"Jesus eff Fuck, Dexter," I mutter aloud, glancing down, but I pause when I read the name.

Quinn...

I feel something like grief, or maybe like love but less specific. I hesitate before reaching for the phone.

"Morgan," I say automatically.

"Hey," he says. I can hear him smiling.

It hurts. A lot, actually.

"What's up?" I say. I don't know if he can hear the edge in my voice. I don't know why I answered.

"It's been awhile."

"It has?" Really, five days or five weeks, I feel like I can barely tell the difference.

"Yeah, it has." The smile's gone now; I can hear it. That hurts too, even though I can't even fucking see it anyway. "How are you, Deb?"

"Oh, I'm just great." I should ask him how he is. "You know, off chasing another asshole skip-trace."

"Sounds..." his voice trails off. A sudden, annoying memory intrudes— his cologne. "Well, beneath you, Deb."

"Yeah, well, turns out not much is beneath me." Lying in a motel bed a few feet from a pile of my own vomit. I can feel my nerve tearing. I want someone to know why I left, someone besides Dexter. I want someone to know what I've done. I want Quinn to know. I so desperately want him to make the decision for me, so I won't have to spend every fucking moment of every fucking day thinking about turning myself in.

"I don't even know what to say to that," he says.

The words are on my lips, my heart and head pounding in painful fucking tandem. _I have to tell you something..._ "I have to..." I hesitate. Adrenaline and sudden terror run so hot and fast it's almost blinding. _Joey, I have to tell you something... _"Joey, I have to..." (_tell you..._) "Look, I have to go." I pull the phone away quickly, before the words can force themselves out.

"Wait, hold on a se—"

I click off. Let my hand fall. Stare at the phone.

I'm shaking.

"Oh fuck," I whisper. The adrenaline breaks, and I pull my knees up to my chest, breathing, quaking. "Oh, god, oh fuck, oh jesus shit fuck." I throw the phone. It hits a bottle on the cheap as fuck table and they both thump to the ground. Far away. "_Fuck..._"

My head hurts so much now it's hard to think or see. I bury my head in my arms, choking on my breath, and it registers dimly that I'm crying.

"Fuck," I whisper into my knees, pinching my eyes closed.

Everything inside me seems to be splitting open, cracking at the seams at the corners of my lips, my chest, as the monstrous black ball of guilt and regret and probably fucking PTSD searches for a way to rip its way out. I find myself sliding off the bed in search of the phone, and I'm halfway to it before I catch myself, suddenly realize what a pathetic fucking asshole I am.

Because somehow it's still my first impulse, like it was after Rudy (_Brian_), like it was after Lundy, and after... just every fucked up day.

Somehow I still want to call him.

I still want to reach out to Dexter for a life raft.

But fuck me twice with a cactus if he wasn't the one who sank the goddamn boat to begin with.

I fall back onto the bed, hugging my chest. The whole weight of my self-imposed exile seems to bear down on me, crushing my soul as if I'd lost it in a trash compacter. I've always hated being alone in moments of stress, never really found any comfort in the stillness, but that's been how I've lived for awhile now, since that night in the church. Maybe Sal Price spooked me. Maybe I just don't want to risk someone asking why I'm constantly chasing Xanax with as much bourbon as I can find. I'm afraid that I'll open my mouth to the wrong person in a moment of stupid, breathless intimacy, finally release my Secret, and once it's out it'll destroy everything— my only family, and whatever's left of my life.

And, really, that's the only thing that can fucking scare me anymore.


End file.
